A Legacy of Talent and Lost Opportunities
By the time I entered Edo College in Benin City in 1977, there was still plenty of evidence of the tremendous investment that former military ruler Samuel Ogbemudia had made, particularly in sports, in the then Bendel State. Several talented students were already making their marks on the national stage as bona fide members of the Bendel State squads. My classmate, Fatai Enabulele, was on the state’s swimming team. Another student, Okhamera, who was the head of Esigie House, was a boxer for Bendel State. Indeed, I can never forget my surprise when I first saw another schoolmate, Oritsejolomi Isebor, donning the green tracksuit with the legend, “Nigeria” emblazoned behind. Isebor, while still a student, had long transcended the Bendel State team. He played basketball for Nigeria.
But football was the most popular sport, and several football competitions helped it retain its popularity – from the under-13 championships to the Principals’ Cup to the Bendel State Academicals. There was also the Giwa-Osagie Cup, which was strictly for schools which offered Advanced Levels – Edo College, Government College, Ughelli, Federal Government College, Warri and St. Patrick’s College, Asaba. The most talented stars were often well-known locally before they emerged on the national stage.
After winning the Giwa-Osagie Cup in the 1977/78 session, Edo College painstakingly assembled a squad of extremely talented footballers in a bid to qualify to represent Nigeria at the World School Championships held in Spain in 1978/79. The all-star cast included names that would later become very famous, such as George Ebojoh, Adebayo, Afejukwu, George Okoh, Bobson Akpotohwo and many others. The football team was fearsome and won its matches, sometimes in a manner that ridiculed its opponents. After several keenly contested qualifying matches, it soon won the rights to represent Nigeria at the World School Championships in Spain. At the time, watching these talented footballers train on the pitch in the evenings was so entertaining that it was a very popular pastime among students.
It was in preparing for the journey to Spain that Saint Finbarr’s College, Akoka, Lagos, which had a formidable reputation for sporting excellence under its long-time principal, Reverend Father Slattery, was invited to play against the star-studded Edo College team. At Edo College, even though we had somehow never encountered them, we had heard that the St. Finbarr’s team was among the best college teams in the country. So, it was with considerable excitement that we looked forward to what we imagined was going to be a very entertaining game. Our most respected football pundits, the duo of Ehizogie Airewele and Chibuzo Aguocha, both agreed that the forthcoming match was “the closest thing to Mohammed Ali’s ‘Thrilla in Manila’.”
The match took place at Ogbe Stadium in Benin City and more than lived up to its hype. It generated as much entertainment as a typical European Cup final would today.
But there was a standout player. No, he wasn’t on the Edo College side. It didn’t matter that he was the smallest and, at 15, perhaps the youngest player on the pitch. He was everywhere on the pitch, dribbling opponents, motivating his teammates, dictating the pace of play and making the star-studded Edo College team look ordinary. As cheering fans of Edo College, this was not what we had expected. We had expected a tough match, no doubt, but we hadn’t reckoned with some fellow coming to Benin City to make our highly rated football team suddenly look rather ordinary.
But so overwhelmed were we, with the dexterity of this football talisman, that even though our task was to cheer the Edo College team, come what may, we found ourselves regularly cheering the young, diminutive player.
Word soon got round and before long, everyone in the stadium knew his name: Henry Nwosu! His skill set him head and shoulders above everyone else – he was in a class of his own. We couldn’t help admiring and applauding the sheer magnificence with which he orchestrated the play with his artistry. The boy was a master craftsman, a magician with the ball.
The match ended in a 3-3 draw, but Henry Nwosu had considerably demystified the Edo College team in our young eyes. How could only one player have such a dramatic impact on a football match, we wondered.
Ironically, even though he was only 15 and the smallest player on the pitch, Nwosu’s performance gave the impression that he was playing in a league for which he was too talented.
And it was hardly any surprise that barely a year later, Henry Nwosu had been called up to the national team – the Green Eagles. Clearly, he belonged in the ranks of Nigeria’s elite professionals. Henry Nwosu would, at 17, feature in the AFCON-winning Green Eagles team of 1980 and earn for himself an MON, like other greats of the team such as Christian Chukwu and Segun Odegbami. He remained an integral part of the national team for many years before transitioning to coaching upon retirement.
Henry Nwosu’s career trajectory shows that sports development really ought to be a strategic process that entails, among others, training programmes and structured tournaments to help identify talent for further refinement and development.
Unfortunately, it is difficult to point to any strategic sports development programme in Nigeria today. All of the youth sporting tournaments of old have long disappeared across the country. Sporting facilities, where they exist, are typically in abject neglect and better associated with political gatherings and religious crusades than sporting events.
Many schools, of course, lack sporting facilities of any sort. Had Henry Nwosu not been privileged to attend St. Finbarr’s College, whose founding principal laid a strong sports foundation for the school, perhaps his genius as a footballer may never have been discovered.
Incidentally, this is a lot of millions of Nigeria’s young people today.
Indeed, the growing number of professional footballers of Nigerian-origin in elite European football leagues – the Eberechi Ezes, Fikayo Tomoris, Tammy Abrahams, Karim Adeyemis, Michael Olises and Bukayo Sakas – is simply because their talents were discovered and honed in environments that are painstakingly designed to do just this. Unfortunately, for each of these stars, there are perhaps 20 others on the streets of Ajegunle and Mushin, innately talented, but with neither means nor opportunity to express that talent.
Nigeria continues to sit on the potential of millions of its young people, due to its lacklustre and unambitious approach to sports development. To make matters worse, in so doing, the country is deprived of the entertaining, unifying and economic potential of sports.
In enjoying football beamed to our TV sets from European leagues, basketball from America’s NBA and tennis from professional circuits around the world, we must remember that these spectacles are the end result of deliberate, painstaking and strategic investment by these countries in sports.
I do hope that the passing of Henry Nwosu, the football prodigy will force Nigerians to deeply interrogate the plight of our country in sports and compel our sports administrators and politicians to live up to their responsibilities.
May Henry Nwosu’s talented soul find rest in the bosom of his creator.
